xml-dev - Re: standards body parallel

[Daniel Veillard <Daniel.Veillard@w3.org>]

On Fri, Oct 13, 2000 at 05:59:45PM -0400, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> If I come into the W3C in the future, it'll be through the front door, not
> via Invited Expert status, and I'll be occupying the Advisory Committee seat.

  Good, next AC Meeting is soon I hope to see you there.
Note that AC discussion are not susbtituable to WG discussion. If you
limit your role to AC member instead of joining WG groups then you
won't impact the substance of the specification, you may say I
approve/disaprove such or such part but not change it. 
Consensus is built in the WGs not at the AC level.
  It's not front door vs. back door, it's do you want to get the work
to progress instead of merely judging from an outside view. Saying that
Invited Experts have a back seat is simply not true. I strongly disagree !

> I strongly suggest that the W3C take a close look at its own process and
> stop offering Invited Expert status as an _alternative_ to opening its own
> process.

  Some groups are publics, it's context dependant.

> It's not an adequate answer, to put it bluntly.  There's no accountability
> right now.  Results, yes.  Accountability?  Only to members.

  As Jonathan said more than 450 member organisation have access,
including a number of public research institutes with hundreds of people
having access. It's not public but a lot of people can check.

> Votes are supposed to be a last resort in a consensus-based organization
> anyway, are they not?

  For technical work we try to get consensus, at the end there is a member
vote as you know then the director decision based on those votes.

> In any event, I can't verify your claim against the
> archives.  One of the few things Ronald Reagan ever said that I liked was
> 'Trust but verify.'  I can't verify, so why should I trust?

  The French in me would then say you cannot be sure of anything you
have to trust something at some point. You may consider not trusting W3C
staff or Members ... There is an awful lot of things that if considered
quietly should not carry that much trust. For example you don't PGP sign
your messages (nor do I but I sign my code !).

> >  You promoted the SAX example as one of the case where this succeeded.
> >I would say that personally I have troubles with SAX in the sense that
> >nobody took the time to see how it should be done in pure C, though one
> >of the most successful XML implementation expat uses one close to it but
> >there is no "official" mapping for C. So for me at least this example 
> >is not perfect. Nobody in this decentralized open assembly decided it
> >was worth its time doing it for C, and I think that's the crucial problem.
> 
> If the DOM provided C bindings, or even C++, I might feel more sympathetic
> to this as an argument for the W3C.  Since it doesn't, I won't.

   Back to technical stuff, from an IDL description there is only one
blessed C binding from the OMG ... Same for C++ IIRC. If you follow the
rules there is only one C interface.

[ I note you removed the core of my argumentation on the 80%/20% work
  rule and examples from large scale free software projects ]

> Sign, sign, everywhere a sign.  Invited Expert status provides a nice way
> to avoid pressure building on the W3C to open up, and to take advantage of
> developers' time, but I don't think this approach really changes the
> landscape.
> 
> The existence of back doors doesn't add any accountability to the process.

  If you open the archives of the mailing-list then you also restrain
how freely people feel about posting arguments on it. It's a trade off.

> >  IMHO suggesting to get everything open and risking anybody to block
> >the process by criticizing without contributing is actually the worse
> >model. Even in projects like Gnome not everybody can commit to the CVS
> >database. And not everybody with CVS write access is entitled to change
> >someone else code without notice. At the end who does the code get the
> >final word,
> 
> I'm not even asking for everyone to be able to participate, though I
> wouldn't object to that.  At minimum, I'm asking for accountability: public
> archives, public votes, public discussions.  Some WGs seem to be headed
> that direction already anyway.
> 
> Writing code is, as always, an excellent way to get the final word.

  Sure it usually have more impact thank just words ... That why I spend
extra time coding.

Daniel

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